


To the Sound of Your Heartbeat

by firefright



Series: Talon and the Hood [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dick Grayson has issues, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Jason Todd Has Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:24:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night brings dark thoughts to Talon, dark thoughts and memories.</p><p>Jason is there to drive them away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Sound of Your Heartbeat

Once there was a Robin.

Or -

There were two Robins. Two boys in red, yellow and green. Two boys who flew and -

Two boys who crashed back down to earth with broken wings.

*

Talon feels his breath stutter in his chest. He does still breathe, contrary to what many think.

It's late even by Gotham standards. The meeting Jason asked him to follow him to finished hours ago and now it's just the two of them, holed up in a crumbling apartment building that Jason claims is secure with the only light the burnt orange flickering of a street lamp outside.

He looks down, lets his thumb trace over the sleeping boys lips - still a boy no matter what he claims - and marvels at the trust he finds in Jason's unconscious face. He's alive, he's real and alive, sprawled over the bed with his head pillowed on Talon's thigh like he isn't capable of killing him with the barest effort. It would be easy, so easy right now, to slit his throat or smother him in his sleep, break his neck. There wouldn't even be a struggle, it would be over before Jason knew what was happening, a split second marking the difference between life and death.

Talon does not kill him. His songbird has already died once and he is not eager to see him return to the grave again so soon, if ever. 

The memory of that day, seeing the headline in the paper, of staking out the airport to follow a grieving Bruce Wayne bringing the body of his son home from Ethiopia to the graveyard stings in a way few things still do.

A Talon is not supposed to feel, a Talon is not supposed to have attachments to anything but the will of his masters.

Talon's masters have been gone a very long time.

Jason had been there when it happened. He was new then, still green to the suit he wore and in far over his head as Batman took apart the Court; Talon can remember the boy standing small behind the shadow of the Bat when it was over, his mouth hanging open in something like awe as Bruce tried to reason with the last assassin standing. _Dick, it's me! It's Bruce._ he'd torn off the cowl, shown his face, _You need to stop! Let me take you home. We can fix this!_

He hadn't, had fled instead, and the last thing he had looked upon in that chamber was not the hulking form of a desperate father but the bright colours of the Robin at his heels. It had somehow hurt less.

Talon draws his hand back from Jason's mouth to settle his fingers into the dark curly mop of hair on top of his head instead. He doesn't want to risk aggravating the wound he had left there earlier from their kiss and waking the boy, not when Jason has circles under his eyes that suggest he hasn't slept well in a very long time. Nightmares perhaps, or maybe it was simply the fact that he hadn't felt safe enough to do so before.

Abruptly he finds himself having to smother down the insane urge to laugh - he hasn't laughed in... he doesn't know how long. Has he ever? Safe, Jason feels safe beside Talon. It's ridiculous, yet there is no other explanation for how he could be slumbering so peacefully.

Maybe he shouldn't be that surprised, there's always been something reckless about Jason and the way he acted towards was Talon was never an exception to that. The smart one's _ran_ from a Talon, they didn't chase them.

Robin had chased him, then, after a while, Talon had chased him in turn until it became a game between them, innocent until it wasn't.

He's here, really here and alive. When Talon puts his other hand over the thin cotton of the t-shirt Jason wore to bed so that he can feel the beat of his heart, slow and steady in rest. He's grown, changed, but unmistakably his songbird, the boy who died in a land far away.

"... should be sleepin'."

Talon doesn't jump, though he does berate himself for not noticing that Jason was waking up sooner. He had let himself get distracted, absorbed in the past and not the present. "I don't need to sleep much."

"Liar, everyone needs t'sleep."

"Then why aren't you?" He almost smiles. That's another thing he missed in the world without Jason, smiling.

The boy yawns wide enough that his jaw cracks. "I was, you woke me up by thinking too loud."

"That's impossible."

"Not if you're a telepath."

An answer for everything. Talon moves his hand up Jason's chest to cup his jaw, "And you're not a telepath."

"Damn," Jason smiles lazily, still half-asleep. He's grown so much in the years he's been gone that he doesn't even have to stretch to press the back of his hand to Talon's cool lips. "you got me." he runs knuckles run over the older man's mouth, across his smooth cheek. "What were you thinking about?"

Talon considers not telling him, considers turning his head and kissing the fingers Jason offers him in a way he knows is distracting instead. He does that anyway, needing a few seconds to weigh his words.

"You. I was thinking about you." Jason starts to smile wider, to wake up properly at his words. 

"I was thinking about you being gone."

The smile freezes and there's immediately pain in Jason's eyes instead of delight, marked by a shadow that passes across his strong features at the allusion to his death. "I'm here now." he replies quietly, desperately, like maybe if he says it enough it can wipe away the years of emptiness between now and then. "And I'm not going anywhere." 

"You are here," he concedes, "but you're not the same."

Jason's hand drops away from Talon's face as he pulls away from him, levering himself up from the mattress so that they face each other in the darkness. The orange light outside casts sharp highlights on the contours of his face. He looks guarded, wary, almost afraid as he asks, "Is that okay?"

Talon thinks briefly about decapitated heads in a bag, about the red helmet that is sitting on the coffee table in the next room over; he thinks about a passionate request for help and a reasoning that hit something inside him he hadn't known was there. A purpose.

"You're still Jason." he says.

It doesn't sound enough to his own ears, yet Jason responds as if he's handed him something precious. His young face seems to crumple - the sliver of doubt there and gone - before he's sliding into Talon's lap and looping his arms around his shoulders in a tight hold. He's almost too big for this, grown too tall and too broad but Talon doesn't care. Jason's a warm solid weight against him, a real live boy.

"I'm me." Jason says soft and fierce, hot breath whispering over his skin like a caress. "I'm me, took me a while to figure that out while I was gone but I know now. This is me, who I should be."

He touches the boy's hair again, running his fingers through those loose curls until they're tangled around his fingers before sliding his other arm about his waist. It's easy to close the distance between them, easy to kiss Jason and taste that life on his lips, feel the hunger in his belly.The kisses they shared before weren't enough, they were never enough.

He wants to _devour_ Jason, wants to press them so tightly together that no one could ever pull them apart again. A single gasp from the boy is enough for Talon to take advantage and press his tongue into his mouth, dominating as he tips them back on the bed. Then a second later he breaks the kiss to set his teeth to Jason's throat, on the opposite side from the bite he left earlier during their reunion.

"Ah, D-Talon!" Hands claw in his back, pulling at the loose tank he wears underneath the Talon suit but he doesn't stop, doesn't hesitate, sucking and biting until he tastes copper in his mouth yet again. Their hips roll together, sharp sparks of arousal igniting between them. He needs this, they need this and whatever Jason is willing to give him he will take.

Their clothes fall by the wayside, torn off, dropped over the edge of the bed or thrown across the room and the skin Talon finds under his hands is less marred than it should be, pure and unmarked but for scars that can't be more than a couple years old. What happened to his little bird? What did this to him?

What brought him back from the dead?

Questions for another time; he knows he'll get the answers from Jason eventually, until then he can be patient. There are more important things in the present.

The taste of Jason's lips and the sweat on his skin, for one; the way he sounds as Talon runs his hands over his chest, thumbs his nipples and then reaches down between his legs, for another. Each sound drives him, each sound _grounds_ him in reality and the sweetness of touching another for something that isn't bloodshed. He always wants to touch so much as he sits on the outskirts of humanity looking in, knowing he can't, knowing he is a killer.

But now he has Jason, his Robin, and they tangle, come together with heated desperation. There's lube from somewhere, pressed into his hand while Jason arches and licks his throat, pulls on his hair. Talon doesn't question where it came from, just gets down to work and though the preparation is inexperienced and a little rushed his songbird doesn't seem to mind. It's just them, the two of them moving together with frantic harmony. Their hands never stilling, reaching and grasping every inch of skin they can reach while Talon marks Jason's throat with his teeth over and over until it's a map of bruises and split skin. Jason's nails claw down his back in kind, leaving raw red marks in their wake.

Faster, harder. Jason throwing his head back and driving his hips back to meet every thrust Talon makes into him. The heat of his body drives him crazy, like he's being burned from the inside out and it can't last forever, no matter how much they both want it to.

He comes and Jason comes with him, Talon's hand wrapped around his cock. He comes and the world drops away, the darkness falls back and for a moment there's only Jason that exists outside of himself.

\- and if the name on the boys lips when he orgasms is not _Talon_ he doesn't think he minds, not this once.

Minutes pass, maybe hours for all he knows, before they manage to move again, shifting until they're comfortable. Talon's head end up resting on Jason's chest and he can feel fingers pulling through the tangled sweep of his hair, working through the knots until there's no more tugging. Their sweat cools but it's warm enough still in the city that they can disregard the blankets, just pressing skin to skin as they drift in the afterglow.

He knows Jason's asleep when his fingers stop moving, when the beat of his heart slows again under Talon's ear and a terrible moment moment follows when he fears it's about to stop. He counts in his head each steady beat until he can believe that's not true.

There'll be more tomorrow; questions, answers and maybe killing at their hands. There's so much he has yet to know (about green tinged eyes and the streak of quicksilver in Jason's hair) and so much to do for this scheme Jason's concocted to work. He worries about it quietly, wondering if Jason really has it in him to follow through.

It can wait until the morning. For now...

For now he lets himself go, lets himself drift and even sleep, all to the steady rhythm of Jason's heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I wasn't going to have them have sex so soon but they insisted. 
> 
> The Talon's in this verse, or Dick as a Talon at any rate, are loosely a mix of canon Court of Owls and the MCU version of the Winter Soldier with memory loss as part of the process. 
> 
> Thank you to all the people who encouraged me to continue this universe. This one is for you.


End file.
